Right. The people most likely to not have a photo ID are those that are poor or of a minority. Both of those are also more likely to vote Democratic, which is why voter ID laws are almost entirely proposed by Republicans. We also have legal precedent that bars anything that hinders the right to vote, which is how most of these laws end up failing. Plus, they're legislation that's looking for a problem. Voter fraud - the problem supposedly addressed by voter ID laws - is extremely rare. Well, it's rarely prosecuted. Pro-voter-ID people can't confidently prove that it happens, and anti-voter-ID people can't confidently prove that it doesn't, because we lack a system for ensuring the voter rolls (list of registered voters) themselves list only real people. What many states do have is electronic voter rolls that they can check to ensure the same person doesn't vote twice, which is how that lady got arrested in Arizona.

The same issues, more or less, cover absentee ballots and early voting. Since our Presidential elections are always held on a Tuesday, people have to leave work to vote. This is protected leave, but the reality isn't quite so easy. In some states lines to vote can take two hours or more. The Democrats in Ohio claimed that as many as 174,000 people left voting stations in 2004 without voting due to "interminable waits." Now, however one feels about what people ought to do or how long they ought to be willing to wait, what we've found is that more people vote when they are allowed to vote by mail or when early voting stations are open on the weekend and in the evenings before the election. Who votes early? Well, in Ohio, where the legislature was trying to restrict early voting this year, blacks (who make up 28% of the population) made up 56% of early voters in 2008. Blacks are a largely Democratic constituency, so finding ways to help them vote increases the chances of a Democrat winning, and finding ways to prevent them from voting increases the chances a Republican will win._________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. I’ll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

I think that asking to see a government-issued ID isn't an unreasonable request; I DO think, however, that we should be working on making ID's much easier and cheaper to acquire._________________The question of our day.

Well, why NOT make them free (at least up-front)? Granted, we'd still be paying for them through higher income taxes, but as much as I'm normally against that THIS one at least makes sense to me. I mean, having a driver's license is a very important necessity for a massive number of activities in daily life; why on Earth should the government be demanding that people have one for all of those actions AND charging them for the privilege? Even putting voting aside, that's pretty silly._________________The question of our day.

Well, why NOT make them free (at least up-front)? Granted, we'd still be paying for them through higher income taxes, but as much as I'm normally against that THIS one at least makes sense to me. I mean, having a driver's license is a very important necessity for a massive number of activities in daily life; why on Earth should the government be demanding that people have one for all of those actions AND charging them for the privilege? Even putting voting aside, that's pretty silly.

I haven't ever had a drivers license, so terming it a massive necessity doesn't really fly with me._________________

I guess it isn't as big a deal in Canada since you can use 2 non-photo ID as long as they both have your name and at least one has your address, and that includes things like bank statements, utility bills, insurance papers, mortgage papers, etc. And we have a fair number of free, government issued IDs- Healthcare Card (Called your CareCard in BC, it's what you use when you go to hospitals and clinics), student IDs issued by high schools, Social Insurance Number cards, even library cards.

Although I have a driver's license, so between that and a mariner's license I meet pretty much all the ID requirements for anything short of international flights._________________Whatever happened to the heroes?

Yknow I really think the best solution is for people to suck it up, spend money and time on CATCHING voter fraud rather than assuming it's going to happen and implementing policies that disenfranchise actual voters in an attempt to prevent it._________________

Well Jean Grey and Scott Summers are red heads too . . . draw your own conclusions._________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

I think that asking to see a government-issued ID isn't an unreasonable request; I DO think, however, that we should be working on making ID's much easier and cheaper to acquire.

"easier to acquire" is the really big thing. in a lot of parts of the country, if you don't drive (and thus, have no driver's license), it can be a major effort to get to some place like the DMV that can issue "official" IDs.

i'm not really wild about id laws primarily because i am a poll worker. if people have to provide 'valid' id, that means the poll workers have to be able to ensure that it really is valid - otherwise, what is the point? so what all will that entail? will we need to compare signatures? photos? i have a perfectly valid driver's license, but because i have a very good driving record, california frequently lets me renew by mail, so my driver's license photo is years out of date. how would i deal with someone challenging me on that? i guess everyone whose id was challenged could be made to vote provisionally - how much time will that add to tallying the votes?

seems like most of the big voter fraud is coming from elected officials. i'm starting to think we need to tighten the requirements for holding elected office._________________aka: neverscared!
a flux of vibrant matter

Paul Ernst appears to be your average mild-mannered accountant type, but look past the glasses and the tie, and you'll find a man once tasked with the job of playing morals cop for the Boy Scouts of America.

For more than two decades, if a troop suspected that a child molester was among them, Ernst was the guy to tell. From 1971 to 1993, when he retired, Ernst was officially the BSA's national director of registration, subscriptions and statistical services—maintaining membership rosters, producing stats for annual reports and keeping the books on Boys' Life magazine subscriptions. But he also had the unpleasant task of being point man for the Boy Scouts' "perversion files," a secret system started around 1920 to try and keep unfit leaders out of the institution's ranks.

Ernst regularly received letters from across the country. They detailed despicable acts by adult staffers and volunteers, and requested the men be banished from the BSA's rolls:

For Ernst, once a small-town Scout himself, policing the organization's seedy side meant being the middleman between troops on the ground and BSA brass, who strived to keep their system as private as possible. That shroud of secrecy is now being attacked by victims' advocates who blame the Scouts for putting the institution before individuals. Officially, the Scouts have asked Ernst not to talk. But the 86-year-old did tell Yahoo News he has no regrets about his career and that he performed his job the way he was told.

"We made some mistakes just like everybody does," he said recently outside his suburban Dallas home. "We were protecting kids. And we thought we were doing a fairly good job, but we can't take things from one generation and put them in another. The laws have changed, everything has changed. He declined to discuss specific cases with Yahoo News, but 20 years ago he described to a reporter his early days on the job. "The files themselves were very shocking to me," Ernst said. "I said this is one of those things in life that you have to completely divorce yourself from when you leave the office."

Separating himself from the secret files hasn't been easy. Since retiring 19 years ago, Ernst has been ordered to testify in lawsuits by abused former Scouts who faulted the organization for failing to protect them. Lawyers like Paul Mones (who deposed Ernst in the video above) have assailed the BSA for failing to notify law enforcement or study the files for patterns that might help identify perverts.

"He was clearly the point person during what is the crucial time period that these files arose," said Mones, a Portland sex abuse attorney.
In 2010, detailed evidence from the confidential files persuaded an Oregon jury to award $20 million to a man who was molested by his troop leader in the 1980s. The amount of the penalty was a record for the Scouts to pay out. But the bigger black eye came last month when, against the Scouts' wishes, the secret files from 1965 to 1985 used in the trial were made public (minus victims' names).

Since then, reporters across the country have been scouring the more than 1,200 cases of alleged molesters in the files. The findings haven't been favorable: Some alleged abusers were allowed to resign quietly, while others were merely put on membership probation where they were able to violate children again.

For Ernst, who still volunteers once a week at the National Scouting Museum in Texas, the scandal has meant seeing his name and critiques of his career make national news. "Going back and making decisions 20 years later is kind of hard," he said when asked if he would have done anything differently. "I've been retired for many years."

One particular quote by Ernst has been used widely. In a 1981 reply to a request to have a den leader banned, Ernst wrote, "I will agree that sleeping nude and showing the boys pornographic books indicated very poor judgement [sic] when dealing with cub scouts. I do not know, however, that this is a serious enough offense to refuse registration anywhere he might try to register unless there are more instances."
Five months later, the den leader Ernst was referring to was court-martialed by the Air Force for encouraging two boys to engage in sexual activities in his presence.

As he has in depositions over the years, Ernst reiterated to Yahoo News that the files were never intended to be investigations, just a tool to catch ineligible volunteers who might seek to rejoin their ranks. Privacy ensured anonymity for victims, the BSA has long maintained.